American World Policies — Context and Discussion

Nothing was more significant of the externality of these debates than the fact that they seemed to ignore everything that we had cared about before. The case for armament was presented not as a continuation of earlier national policies but as a sort of historical interlude. Past interests were forgotten in the insistence upon the immediate. Until the war broke in upon us we had been groping, both in foreign and domestic policies, towards certain forms of national expression; arbitration, international justice, democracy, social reform. Throughout a century, we had believed that we had blundered towards these goals, and that our history revealed an aspiration approaching fulfilment. We had settled a continent, built an ordered society, and amid a mass of self-created entanglements, were striving to erect a new civilisation upon the basis of a changed economic life. Now it was assumed that all this stubbornly contested progress was forever ended by the conflict engulfing the world.

This whole idealistic phase of American life was disparaged by our sudden ultra-patriots. These men, with a perhaps unconscious bias, opposed their brand new martial idealism to what they falsely believed was a purely {7} materialistic pacifism. Actually both advocates and opponents of increased armaments were contending under the stress of a new and bewildering emotion. For decades we had concerned ourselves with our own affairs, undisturbed by events which convulsed Europe. But the present war, because of its magnitude and nearness, had set our nerves jangling, excited us morbidly, dulled us to horror and made us oversensitive to dread. We read of slaughter, maiming, rape and translated the facts of Belgium and Servia into imaginary atrocities committed against ourselves. We wanted to be "doing something." Not that we wished war, but rather the chance to rank high according to the standards in vogue at the hour. While hating the war, we had insensibly imbibed the mental quality of the men who were fighting. We were tending to think as though all future history were to be one continuing cataclysm.

For the moment, like the rest of the world, we were hypnotised. Upon our minds a crude picture had been stamped. We were more conscious of peril than before the war, though the peril was now less. Our immediate danger from invasion was smaller than it had been in June, 1914; yet while we were perhaps foolishly unafraid in 1914, in 1916 we trembled hypnotically.

It was to this state of the American mind that all sorts of appeals were made. Those who wanted universal conscription and the greatest navy in the world argued not only from dread of invaders but from the necessity of a united nation. They wanted "Americanism," pure, simple, undiluted, straight. There was to be no hyphen, no cleavage between racial stocks, no line between sections or social classes. America was to be racially, linguistically, sectionally one.

It was an ideal, good or bad, according to its {8} interpretation. A more definitely integrated America, with a concrete forward-looking internal and foreign policy, could aid disinterestedly in untying the European tangle. In the main, however, the demand for Americanism took on an aggressive, jingoistic, red-white-and-blue tinge. Out of it arose an exaggerated change of mood toward the "hyphenate," the American of foreign, and especially German, lineage. Newspapers teemed with attacks upon this man of divided allegiance.

In other ways our agitation for a United America took a reactionary shape. Though a pacific nation, we experienced a sudden revulsion against pacifism and Hague tribunals, as though it were the pacifists who had brought on the war. Contempt was expressed for our industrialism, our many-tongued democracy, our policy of diplomatic independence. Those most opposed to Prussianism, as it has been defined, were most stubbornly Prussian in their proposals. We heard praises of the supreme education of the German barracks, and a clamour arose for universal service, not primarily industrial or educational but military in character. A decaying patriotism of Americans was deplored quite in the manner of Bernhardi. More than ever there was talk of national honour, prestige, the rights of America. Our former attitude of abstention from European disputes was called "provincial," and we were urged to fight for all manner of reasons and causes. Even though we cravenly desired peace, we were to have no choice. An impoverished Germany, beaten to her knees, was to pay her indemnity by landing an army in New York and holding that city for ransom. Around such futilities did many American minds play.